picking flowers of the self from the selfless world

by S. T. Brant

Vitality has died. Its remnants are the calyxes 

we find on sidewalks or the petals

That love us not in roads; worthwhile carnations

pressed flat in books, 

Reduced from animate examples to resurrectless

tropes. Life has been made a word

Scanned quickly on a page and checked as read

as if completed and ingested

And defeated; so we become characters

in life’s text, meaningless to it 

As it to us, and go on fuselessly through time, 

our days wasted rays of sun

That aren’t enjoyed, aren’t taken in, unvitamin’d.

Life sees us burn to zero from its window.

S. T. Brant is a teacher from Las Vegas. Pubs in/coming from EcoTheo, Timber, Door is a Jar, Santa Clara Review, Rain Taxi, New South, Green Mountains Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ekstasis, 8 Poems, a few others. You can find him on Twitter @terriblebinth or Instagram @shanelemagne.